I was originally for the death penalty, but I had to fight against it in a class debate, and it made me change my mind.

The truth is, the death penalty does not deter criminals from committing crimes. I challenge someone to find an official study that says it does.

Also, it is also not true that life in prison costs more than putting a person to death. In fact, the required appeals that come with sentencing someone to death cost MUCH more than the cost of keeping someone alive.

Also, the idea that we should kill people because they commit horrible, horrible atrocities is mislead. We cannot let the victim decide the punishment for a crime, because emotions and irrationality tend to take hold. Some people would call for heads to roll for the simplest of crimes.

If you want studies to show this, I can give them to you, but I don't feel like pulling them up now. All of them will tell you, though, that the death penalty is unnecessary as a punishment in a modern nation.

well i am for the death penalty but only because i am a christian and God says it is what we should do. I did a report on it at school and my research showed that it was impossible to say if it was truly effective or not.

I am all for the death penalty, sure, its sad, but it would cut down crime rates.Taxpayers, the average Joe citizen (who never does anything wrong) is being penilized by criminals. We pay for prisinors to be taken care-of. It is sad to think that you are helping a killer live. For the prinsoners who have mental problems, they should be in mental instituations, not cooped up in a cell. If anything this will just make them do worse things.

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But they managed to figure out whodunit way before anyone was ever jailed because of a strand of hair.

Yes, but with the introduction of dna evidence, it is considered as pretty much irrefutable in a court of law. However if it is not as reliable as juries think it is...

If we stop pussyfooting around the death penalty it would be cheaper hell a bullets around 25 cents for a cheap one and if you start hanging people again you can reuse the rope

Well, I can't counter any of the first three. I know about how the EU holds all life dear, which I find a little too soft for my liking. The EU constitution can even be interpreted to protect animal life. That's a bit extreme.

Also, you may be interested to learn that, alongside the United States, South Korea and Japan still permit the death penalty. The same goes for Russia, although there has not been an execution there since 1999.

Oh, and I knew there was a reason I disliked Canadians...

As for the bit about it being cheaper to jail someone than to kill them, it is true (or so say the sources I've seen). However, this is because capital punishment entails years upon years in prison, including the innumerable appeals during that time, followed by whatever method of execution is chosen. Now, if the death penalty was commuted quicker, it would be incredibly cheaper.

DNA evidence is indeed showing that it's not as reliable as previously thought. But they managed to figure out whodunit way before anyone was ever jailed because of a strand of hair.

Pain is hardly cruel and unusual. If it was, there'd be no such thing as boot camp. I've heard that gets much worse than being shot or hanged. Well, aside from the knowledge that you're going to die. But you should have figured that out before you committed whatever crime that got you the death penalty. (I use the theoretical "you" a lot in my arguments, I just noticed.)

I listened to a speaker at a national conference. He was the father of a young woman who was killed in the Oklahoma City bombing. Timothy McVeigh was responsible for the death of his daughter. At first he was blinded by his need for revenge, but then he spoke with the McVeigh family and he realized that he would never want to put his parents through the pain of losing a child, like he had. I believe his name was Bud Welsch, but I could be wrong.

I somewhat understand where you are coming from clpo...do you have anything to counter any of the other points I made?

I've recently switched my stance on the death penalty. I used to be against it because I saw it as an ineffective form of punishment. Ending the criminal's troubles with one injection? What good is that? Not everyone is afraid to die.

However, in light of the recent Zacarias Moussaoui trial (he was sentenced to life without parole), I've decided that the death penalty, while not necessarily an effective form of punishment or deterrence, can be and is justified in some cases. Take Ramzi Yousef, the architect of the 1993 World Trade Center bombing. Where's he at now? In the United States Penitentiary Administrative Maximum Facility in Florence, Colorado getting free food, shelter, clothing, and medical care, among other things. Does a man who killed at least six people, has ties to al-Qaeda, planned to bring down the WTC towers, and was a major planner of the 9/11 attacks deserve to be taken care of in such a manner? Or what about Theodore Kaczynski, better known as the Unabomber? Or Gary Ridgway, the infamous Green River Killer, who is blamed for at least 48 deaths since the early 1980s?

All of these people and more are being supported by American taxpayers, supported by the very people whom they have killed, planned to have killed, or assisted in killing. Do they really deserve to live? And even if they do, do they deserve to be coddled?

If the death penalty was abolished, the prisons would only fill up more. There is only so much space in which to stick seasoned killers and rapists and child molesters. Imagine if the death penalty had been banned in the early 1990s. Timothy McVeigh, the man who detonated the bomb that killed 168 people in Oklahoma City, would still be alive, living in relative comfort in a maximum security prison. Ted Bundy would be taking up room next to him. Oh, there may be no chance of escape from super-maxumum prisons such as ADX Florence or USP Marion, and many of the convicts in these prisons have no chance of parole, but they're still taking up room. Heck, they lead a better life in prison than Americans living under the poverty line.

Another point against prisons is the chance for human rights violations, especially in the case of supermax prisons like ADX Florence. Prisons like that one are designed so that inmates get minimal interaction with fellow convicts and the outside world in general. Once they go in, they don't come back out. Human rights stay outside.

Of course, I find little wrong with this. What many of those people did to their victims was far worse than anything being done to them. But it's better to kill them than keep them around, taking up room and constantly soaking up tax money that could be put to much better use.

Unless the US prison system is massively reformed to get rid of such coddling of dangerous inmates, the death penalty is the way to go. There is no wisdom in keeping murders and rapists around simply because it's too "wrong" to kill them. It was wrong for them to kill, wrong for them to rape. This is the punishment reserved for such crimes. Is America too soft to carry it out?

Nay.

The United States is one of the last of the developed nations to maintain the Death Penalty. Undeveloped states do not have the security advantages that we have in the US. Of the Developed countries with the DP, the majority are under authoritarian or totalitarian rule. With the US still allowing the DP, we lose international respect.

In order to be in the European Union (EU) your country has to ban the DP.

If a death row criminal escapes to Canada, the Canadian government will only release them to us if we give them our word that their sentence will be commuted.

Some sources say that it may actually be CHEAPER to keep an inmate in jail for life than to kill them off. While this may seem odd, think about it. The criminal will be in maximum security prison for months, even years, before their death sentence is carried out. Then the actual procedure must be paid for. I pay too much in taxes as it is, I don't need to be paying for someone's death.

Even DNA evidence, which has come to seem so reliable in our society today is no guarantee of guilt. Someone working in the labs in Oklahoma was recently convicted or falsifying DNA evidence in the cases of 11 who were killed on death row, and 12 death row inmates. Reliable, I think not.

One of the states (I believe Oregon) still allows firing squad as a form of capital punishment. The prisoner gets to decide. Other options still can include hanging, electric chair and lethal injection. Even lethal injection, which seems the most reasonable, may still be wrong. Amendment 8 protects convicted persons from "Cruel and Unusual Punishment". Studies are now beginning to show that lethal injections may actually be causing pain to those who receive them. Even if they do not feel physical pain, imagine being strapped down, watching that needle going into your skin, knowing that once it does... Also, imagine being the one who has to do that injection, a family member who is watching, a government worker who is forced to act as a witness-tell me that is not cruel AND unusual.

(Do you want me to go on? I have written 2 papers about this, participated in a debate AND represented the interest group of the European Union in a death penalty moot court case...I could go on all day...)

So...any takers?

nay. its the same old arguemenet: it makes no sense to punish murder by murdering them. and in the words of mahatman gandhi "an eye for an eye will make us all blind"

Nay, never in a thousand years. Two wrongs don't make a right, An eye for an eye makes the world blind, such classic phrases.

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I'm no savage either, but I think the dealth penalty is crucial in our justice system. I wished they would use it more and sooner on the people on dealth row.

How is it "crucial"?

I'm no savage either, but I think the dealth penalty is crucial in our justice system. I wished they would use it more and sooner on the people on dealth row.

I'm cool with the death penalty.

I'm no savage.

YES!!! Think if the person killed a family member that you loved. Better yet your Girl/Boyfriend. Wouldnt you want the person dead?

Isn't that what maximum security prisons are for?

I say yay. Interesting point though clpo but those people are put to death for the benefit of humanity, not themselves.

Nay. Death is too nice for most people who get it.

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If your child was kidnapped, raped, stabbed, and finally shot, would you really want that man to live? Neither of those families did. Those 2 men tortured those kids and then killed them. That, in my eyes, warrants the death penalty. Let God subjectively judge and forgive them; our job is to only objectively judge.

But what does that solve? I mean seriously, if those people were given the death penalty then you would have four dead people and it did not bring the two children back to life?

My view on the death penalty is that a government does not have the right to kill its citizens. No matter what the circumstances. However, I do believe that a government has the right to protect its citizens by locking up criminals for their whole lives if necessary. The death penalty actually costs us more in the long run, what with appeals and such, than it would to feed and house a criminal for the rest of his/her life in a prison.

It is kind of paradoxal that so many Christians are for the death penalty and yet the christian bible does say 'do not judge' (paraphrasing of course) and it seems that the doctrine is that (because you are supposed to 'give up your life to god' and 'do what god has in plan for you.') only god can decide the fate of someone. So it seems like supporters of the death penalty can't be christian because they are also calling themselves god.

Also, if revenge or 'justice' is what you are looking for, what is worse: the death penalty or living life without any freedoms (or very few). I would probably want death after a while of no freedom (you know the whole 'give me liberty or give me death' schpeal...)